


our little eternity (cross my heart and yours)

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Feels, Inspired by Goblin (K-drama), Inspired by Music, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Supernatural romance, background cindylu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-13 07:03:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13565340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Prompto has an ability that is both a blessing and a curse: he can see the dead who linger on in the world of the living. And most of the time, he can smile and laugh and hold quiet conversations with the dead; and he can be friends with the living.So it’s a little bit different, when he meets Noctis: who is neither among the living nor the dead.And why the hell does Prompto seem to be the only person who can see the sword in Noctis’s chest?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the FFXValentines Exchange run by @peonysoda
> 
> For recipient @thefateoflies (on Tumblr)
> 
> \-----
> 
> references:  
>  _Dokkaebi_ / _Goblin_ \-- Korean TV drama, 2016-2017  
>  “Stay With Me” -- Chanyeol and Punch, from the Dokkaebi / Goblin OST  
> The First Elegy, _The Duino Elegies_ \-- Rainer Maria Rilke  
>  “Escape Artist”, “Optimist”, and “Exurgency” -- Zoe Keating  
> “Cross My Heart” ( _Ayashi no Ceres_ 2nd ED) -- Day-Break

1.  
“See you tomorrow?”

He can feel the smile already pulling at the corners of his mouth even as he finishes mopping up the area behind the till, and he steps out from behind the counter and waves. “Not working tomorrow,” he reminds the night manager, “just the package deliveries, remember?”

“Oh, you’re right, I forgot!” Silver hairs winding through a messy blue bob, and dark-green lipstick faded at the end of the working day: they’re patient, they’re endlessly good for talking filters and lenses, but they’re not entirely good with remembering how the real world works, and honestly, Prompto knows he feels the same way sometimes.

No harm, no foul.

He locks up after they’ve gone, and now he’s got the shop all to himself.

Maybe he likes to be the last person in the shop because he likes having this controlled careful time to be alone with his thoughts, and maybe he likes to be the last person in the shop because then he can pick up the high-end cameras and imagine using them. The weight and the heft of a long lens in his hands, and the ways it can bring a subject into focus. 

He picks up one of the shop’s latest acquisitions, a camera with a bright-red body, and peers carefully at its back panels. Screen and viewfinder and a series of buttons for menus and effects and filters. The shutter button and the molded sides so it’s easy to hold on to. The thing’s damned heavy, though, and he polishes it clean with a soft cloth, and replaces it on its display stand.

It’s so much better than the second-hand unit he’s got in his locker in the back of the shop.

He’s whistling as he cleans off the mop and puts away the dusting cloths, and then he hears it: the small, sweet laugh coming from the passageway into the studios.

Translucent lines of a lacy skirt and a big blue bow, extravagant loops tied into the back of a dress. 

Prompto grins, and sits down on the floor, and the form of a little girl glides towards him on silver-mist shoes. “Hi,” she whispers, and she brushes her hand against his shoulder, sending cold briefly through him. 

“Hey yourself,” he says, and he pats the air right over her head, to a bright giggle -- which only grows in mirth when he has to turn away and hide a yawn in his hand. “Sorry,” he adds. “Long day.”

“You always say that,” the girl, the ghost, says. “Always a long day. You work and work and work.”

“It’s easy work, here,” he protests, very gently, and he sticks his tongue out at her and she makes the gesture right back.

“You like it here, don’t you,” she says.

He grins. “Totally. Like I said. Easy work. I can live with the pay. And I can talk to you.”

Sweet soft laugh. “I just wish you would stay longer.”

“Another time,” he promises.

And he’s aware of her skirts tripping along with him, as he finally goes through to the staff room to collect his backpack and his camera. 

Of all the ghosts he’s ever met, this little girl never fails to make him smile -- and he grins back, when he points his camera in her direction and pretends to take a picture -- she laughs some more, and poses for him like she’s about to dance, and he throws her a thumbs-up gesture afterwards.

“Tomorrow?” she asks, as he extracts his laden keyring from his pocket.

“I’ll come by tomorrow. Work again next week,” he says.

“Okay, I’ll be here,” she says, and he feels the cold brush of it when she pecks his offered cheek, and fades quietly into a lingering wisp of a smile.

City lights on the sidewalk, once he’s out the door and all the locks are in place, and he throws off colored shadows and that makes him smile, and shake his head, because on the one hand, he’ll never get over the fact that there are so many lights in this place, it’s literally the city that never sleeps; and on the other hand, there are so many lights in this place and so when he looks up he can’t see any stars.

He likes looking up at the stars.

It was easier to see stars, back home, where it was high up and the air was crisp and cool nearly every day of the year: but then again, back then, he needed to look up at the stars because there were too many people looking at him with fear, with anger.

He’s got to get off this line of thinking or he’ll never get to sleep, he’ll never get any peace, and he’ll just wind up wanting to punch another not-hole into the wall next to his bed -- 

He turns the corner, and catches sight of someone stepping out of a shadowed doorway just ahead, and -- something about that form is familiar.

Something about the smile aimed at him is familiar: like welcome, like the nice kind of recognition.

Vivid dark-blue in those eyes, and faint silver in the lines of his usual suit, in the gentle tilt of his head: but when Prompto reaches out to the hand that’s being offered to him, he can actually touch it, and actually feel the cool rough skin. 

“Hello, Prompto.”

“Hello, Noctis,” he says, and he closes his eyes because there is that glow again in Noctis’s chest.

He doesn’t want to see it. He doesn’t need to see it. He doesn’t want to be reminded of it.

He thinks stern thoughts at the part of his brain that’s working overtime, trying to show him the part of Noctis that he doesn’t want to think about _right now_ , and he lets out a soft breath. Stops on the street.

“Prompto.” Gentler, this time, if that were even possible.

“My brain hates me right now,” and of all the things he could have said -- why that? Why does he have such a terrible compulsion to tell Noctis all the things, even the ugly things, even the things that reveal him for who and what he really is?

And what he is, is this: he’s a freak, and a lonely one at that.

If only he hadn’t started seeing -- the dead, walking among the living.

But then again, if he hadn’t started seeing the dead, then he probably wouldn’t be able to see Noctis now.

He tries to pull away, he does: and he comes to a gentle stop when Noctis’s hand tightens very gently on his wrist. “I -- Noctis --” he begins.

Attraction, drawing in, and: he’s being moved. He’s being pulled close.

“I -- it’s not my place to say,” he hears Noctis whisper. “It’s not. I cannot -- I don’t know how to help. I wish I could do something to help. You need that, do you not? I want to help. I don’t know how to. But I can do this?”

_This_ being the presence of him, otherworldly-cool-powerful, surrounding Prompto, which only makes sense because Noctis is hugging him, right here on this colored-light sidewalk, this night-quiet street corner.

Noctis’s hand at the back of his head, grounding.

Prompto takes a deep breath, and puts his arms around Noctis, and holds on. 

And his brain sort of -- rushes down into an odd kind of quiet. Quiet, like standing over a precipice, like waiting to go over a razor-sharp edge.

But if he goes over this edge he’s not going to be alone, and that -- that’s what helps.

Not being alone is what helps, without fail, every time.

So he takes a deep breath of -- Noctis, who smells like balm, and softly charred spices, and rushing river waters, and wills himself into a calmer state.

And he can smile, when he looks up.

Noctis smiles back. “Good. Better now, I hope.”

“Thanks to you.”

“Like I said: I wanted to help. I still want to. I should learn, should I not?” And there’s something so sweet and so boyish, when Noctis laughs softly and scratches the back of his head: such a contrast to the suit, to the faint lines radiating from the corners of his eyes, the more prominent lines framing his mouth when he speaks.

“It’s not a requirement,” Prompto makes himself say, after a moment, after they’ve started walking. He has no idea where they’re going; he has nowhere to be. “You don’t have to help me. I think that whole thing, that whole idea of helping, that’s on me. Got to help myself -- no, it’s not just that. It’s, like, I _need_ to help myself. That’s the whole point.”

“Yes. But also. I do want to -- do what I can, for you.”

“You have your own problems.” He’s not, not just referring to the persistent spark that he can see, that’s burning right in the center of Noctis’s chest, that he can’t seem to escape seeing even now. Even now that he’s working actively to think calm thoughts.

“I do. And I, I hear what you are trying to say.” Shrug. The elegant movement of a shoulder, the fabric draped over that shoulder, the fine pinstripes of the suit jacket and the line of the sleeve. “My advisers,” he hears Noctis add, after a moment. “They would all tell me to deal with my own problems entirely on my own. But that is not always possible, is it? And that is not always the proper option either. I have to be able to ask for help, if I’m to be able to provide it.”

“Which advisers?” Prompto asks, and he chuckles, and he feels a flutter in his own chest, like amusement, like fondness. “Maybe I know them.”

Noctis laughs, too. “You might, at that. They only dwell in the rooms above yours, after all.”

“Still not over the fact that the ghosts who haunt my cousin’s place are the ghosts of your, your friends.”

“I wish they had been my friends, truly, when we’d all been working together,” and he can still hear Noctis’s laughter. “None of us knew any better. Again, with the asking for help, and not being able to.”

“Come on back with me, then, you can talk to them. And, and do whatever it was that you guys used to do when you were all alive. Just keep it down. I want to sleep,” Prompto teases.

“Do you?” Concern, in the warm regard that’s turned onto him now. “It has been a long day for you.”

“I don’t mind it getting longer. Honest.” He shrugs. “Nothing to do tomorrow.”

“I see.”

Looping walking slow path, and Prompto catches glimpses of other ghosts, other people, walking through the deepening night. The ghosts flash like after-images in neon lights. 

He turns the corner in Noctis’s wake, and blinks, when he spots the brightly-lit walkway looming over their heads. He’s already reaching for his camera. “Can we?”

Why does Noctis smile at him the way he does? “Of course.”

Up a series of steep stairs, and Prompto grins and breathes in deep, because the climb leaves a nice tingling warmth in his knees and his calves.

Beneath the cold fierce glare of blue-white light, Noctis’s hair seems to turn entirely into spiked silver haze -- and it’s not the first time that Prompto aims his camera in his direction, where the halos cast onto him by the surrounding light fixtures turn him almost luminous.

And since it’s not the first time -- Noctis just looks away and smiles, a little, and Prompto walks a tight circle around him, catching him in various angles. Catching him against the backdrop of this place: it was supposed to have been an elevated road, or a series of roads, like an inner-city ring leading to various downtown attractions. 

He tries to remember what led to the roadway’s conversion into a park, and fails: all he can see are the flowers blooming relentless and reckless in the planter right behind Noctis, punctuating the deep green leaves and the light-choked night with their bright shouting colors. Orange and red and yellow faces of the flowers, vibrant flames, and against them Noctis stands out, and the reverse is also true. 

He forces himself to stop, when Noctis coughs and turns partly away from the camera. “Sorry,” he says.

“Please don’t,” is the reply.

But Prompto stops shooting, and sits down on the narrow rim of the planter instead.

Noctis immediately closes the distance between them. “Show me?”

“I thought you didn’t like looking at your own face,” he teases, as he switches the camera back on.

“Then I won’t look at my face. I want to see those,” and he hooks his thumb over his shoulder. “These flowers. They seem -- cheerful, to me.”

“And really vivid, too,” and Prompto relents, sets the camera to macro mode, and he sighs because he really doesn’t have any lenses for such close-up work: but he shoots a test frame of the huge orange bloom right next to Noctis’s cheek. Ruffled edges on the petals, and a ring of pale yellow around the deep-burgundy center: he doesn’t quite get all the details, like the fine white hairs sprouting from the stem and the pale-green calyx.

He tells Noctis so, when he shows him the image on the small screen on the back of his camera. “But then again,” he says, “I don’t know much about shooting plants. Flowers. It’s its own thing, you know? And I’m still trying to learn everything I can about shooting people. Not that way,” he laughs. The joke is old and tired and stale.

And Noctis grins anyway, and pokes him in the shoulder. “And you shoot yourself, don’t you?”

“Noctis,” and he groans, and grins, and shakes his head.

“Take a picture of yourself,” Noctis demands, very gently, with such a sweet smile. “With the flowers. You took mine, so I want you to do that for yourself, too.”

“Does it have to be this one?”

And Noctis is looking around, eyes narrowed. Honed and focused and Prompto swallows past the leap of his pulse in his chest, past the lump in his throat -- that only seems to grow, however, when Noctis gets to his feet and points. “How about those?”

Trumpet-shaped flowers on long stems rise from that planter, and each flower is such a shocking bright blue that Prompto’s almost tempted to pick one, and put it in the buttonhole of Noctis’s jacket.

But he restrains himself: he chooses one of the flowers to pose with, and he holds out the camera with ease, grins into the lens, and fires off a test shot. Turns his wrist a little, and takes a second.

“Let me see,” Noctis says, immediately after.

Prompto makes a face at him. “You were looking at me, when I took the shot. Why look at the photo, too?”

“There are many ways of looking at you. Of seeing you. This way,” and he watches as Noctis taps the corner of his eye, “this is one. That camera is another. I like seeing you, in different ways.”

And Prompto feels the flush travel all the way up into his hair.

He struggles with the urge to cover his face, because Noctis is looking at him so gently, so kindly -- and Noctis is holding the hand that’s not wrapped around the camera, so he can’t actually raise it without breaking away.

Now Noctis is tapping that hand with his fingertips, leaving behind a fleeting impression of coolness. “Show me?”

He does, and can’t stop his mouth from running, can’t stop the words. “I didn’t even get the flower in focus.”

“Then try again,” Noctis says. “Or perhaps -- will you let me take a photograph of you?”

“Yes, but,” and Prompto tries to hand him the camera.

“No need.”

Prompto blinks, blinks, and Noctis is producing his phone from his pocket, and bringing it up between them, and he hears the simulated click and he does cover his face then.

“I also need practice,” Noctis laughs.

And Prompto laughs back, helplessly.


	2. Chapter 2

2.  
 _We need to talk, you didn’t do anything wrong, I think I’ve screwed it up_

_It’s about dinner_

Blink. Blink.

One sock on and then the other, and then he’s hitting a speed-dial button. “Dude,” he says. “What do you mean, you think you’ve screwed it up?”

“It’s dinner, I’ve screwed up dinner, like, we’re gonna have to cancel tonight,” and Nyx sounds tired and ticked off and there’s a rising clamor of sounds in the background, too many angry human voices. “Shit’s come up here at work. I gotta stay and do damage control.”

“They’re paying you overtime, right,” Prompto asks as he scratches the back of his head. As he feels the bottom drop out of his stomach.

“They better. Overtime and more. ’Cos if they don’t I swear I’m going to shiv someone,” is the reply. “Sorry. I know we’re supposed to keep doing these family dinner things.”

“I like hanging out with you, but not because we’re family. Or not just because we’re family. And I’m real sore we can’t hang out tonight,” he says.

“Believe me, I know, I’m sore too, I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

“Okay, Nyx. You go kick ass. I’m -- I’m just going to get some takeout. Be a vegetable. That sorta thing.”

“Shit, fuck, Prom, no -- ”

He hangs up, then.

And takes a deep breath, and falls backwards onto his pillows, and the evening is dismal and silent, and he rolls over to muffle a scream.

Not his fault Nyx is so busy, and not Nyx’s fault either -- but Nyx is the only family he wants to have in this world, and they don’t even get enough chances to _be_ family without their respective jobs, their respective lives, getting in the way.

He grits his teeth against the reminder that’s always in his eyes, that’s always on his mind: the constant reminder of the reason why he’s here in the first place, paying rent on a small apartment owned by a distant cousin -- a distant cousin who used to be able to do what he does now. Who used to be able to see what he sees now.

Whispers of sound next to his outstretched hand, and the brush of cool sensation that he knows means he’s got -- visitors.

“Hi,” he mumbles against his pillow.

“Would you take us as company, for your evening meal?” 

“I kind of do that already, don’t I,” he says, and he rolls back over and he throws a wobbly sort of smile in the direction of the ghostly form sitting primly next to him. “I kind of do that a lot.”

“I was speaking specifically about tonight.” Half-visible lines of what he’s wearing, caught between old and new modes, caught between the past and the now. Pale-colored shirt with its standing collar and its long sleeves; the dark gray of his billowing robe cinched tight at the waist by the belt of his pleated trousers, crisp folds in blue. Half-framed glasses perched on his nose, and the twist of sympathy that tugs at the corner of his mouth. Short hair falling loose and soft around his face.

“Hi Ignis,” Prompto says, and he curls into a smaller ball around his pillow, and he doesn’t care about the creases in his own t-shirt and jeans, since he’s apparently not going out tonight after all. “Where should I get dinner from?”

“Were I in the mood to cook -- to cook something to make you feel better -- I’d suggest stew. And pickles, but I know you are not fond of that.”

“Stew, yeah, sounds good, but where am I going to get it?”

“Wish we could help you,” and the other presence appears, then, wild dark hair and kind eyes, and Prompto waves weakly at blood-red armor and black sashes and gold-chased big fuck-off sword, none of which do any harm to his duvet or his sheets.

“It sucks,” Prompto adds, after a moment.

“Sorry it sucks.” 

It should have been strange to hear that phrase in Gladiolus’s accent -- an accent as old as Ignis’s, and just as refined -- but he’s more than used to the two of them, now, and he likes their company and their conversation and their stories.

Just. He’d had something else planned for tonight, and now that thing is not going to happen.

His stomach rumbles, dismally.

One of them, or both of them, starts to hum, and Prompto sighs into their harmony and thinks about going to sleep -- 

When the song stops in its tracks, he bolts upright.

And stares.

“Crown Prince,” he hears Ignis and Gladiolus say, in ragged unison.

And Noctis, here in his room, standing by the foot of his bed, returns their salute, hand over heart, and says, “It’s good to see the two of you, as always.”

“Hi?” Prompto says, once he can make himself speak.

“I know you have asked me not to make a habit out of dropping in unannounced, but -- ”

“Shut up,” Prompto says, and he propels himself to his feet and grabs Noctis in an embrace. “You. Them. All three of you. I know I don’t like being around a lot of people. But you are all exceptions to that rule.”

“Thanks,” he hears Gladiolus say, and he does sound pleased.

As for Noctis: he feels those arms coming up to hold him, to steady him. “It’s a good thing I am here, then,” he hears him say. “What is wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, I didn’t do anything wrong, and no one did anything wrong,” he mutters into Noctis’s collar. “But I was supposed to go out to dinner with my family. Was. It got canceled. Family’s not going to make it tonight.”

Hand pressing in between his shoulder blades. “I am sorry to hear that,” he hears Noctis say. “Will you want company, or -- something to do?”

“I have no idea, I just, I feel completely blank right now.”

When Noctis hums, he sounds different: the tone is much lower and the melody is something Prompto can almost recognize. 

“May I suggest something?” Noctis asks, after a long moment.

“Yeah.”

“Perhaps you’ll need something to keep the cold away,” is the next thing that Noctis says. “And your shoes, of course.”

“We’re going out?” And it’s difficult, so difficult, to break away. To look for his favorite coat -- the red one with its massive hood and its white wood-and-rope closures -- and his boots. “Where are we going?”

“If it was all right with you, I was thinking of inviting you to my quarters.” Small smile, tentative, that doesn’t quite go with the hunch in his shoulders. “There is something there that might be worth your while. It might cheer you up.”

“Should I change? Put on something better-looking?”

“Just as you are now is fine, if you are already comfortable.”

He’s not entirely sure, and his unease remains, even as he grasps Noctis’s hand more firmly and the world vanishes in a thump and a flash of blue-blaze light, only to reform into -- marble beneath his feet, the gray and the black elegantly streaked in white lines. Small chandelier directly overhead, gray-tinted glass shapes dangling, catching pale-golden candle-flames in their gleaming facets. 

As Prompto watches, the candles in the chandelier go dark all at once, as if they had been snuffed out by the wind -- although everything in this place is still and gently silent. 

No time to stare: Noctis leads him past a long dining table, past a room that looks like it’s made of full-to-bursting bookshelves, past long couches draped in white covers.

He’s been here before, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling like he’s not supposed to be here: his boots are scuffed and the sleeve of his t-shirt is trailing stray threads, and there are small spots of mud on the hems and wrists of his coat. 

And Noctis moves from room to room, from space to space, without letting go of him: so he only catches glimpses of closed doors, of dark frames on the walls.

Susurrus of doors being pulled open, and he follows Noctis through.

“Oh,” Prompto says.

The city’s sprawled out at their feet: and there are only a few buildings in the immediate area, and there aren’t a lot of lights either. Sure, he can see the neon blazing closer to street level, and the flashing streaks of motor traffic on the quick move, but those lights are down there, and nowhere near close to up here. 

Low-light lamps trailing off to his left, and he can see their reflections on the swaying rippling surface of a small swimming pool. A grouping of table and chairs to his right, also lit by a single dim lamp.

But he and Noctis are standing next to a chest-high railing, together in a pool of cloaking night, and the sky opens up in all its stars and all its vast silence above them.

“Noctis -- this, what,” he says, and he doesn’t actually know what he’d like to say. _Thank you_ , certainly, and _Why are you always so alone?_ , and _What do you even do here?_

And: _Why are you doing this for me?_

What he actually says is: “It feels like you could fall into the stars from here.”

It’s only the fact that Noctis is standing so close by, that allows Prompto to see his soft smile in response. “It makes me happy that you feel that way. And we are lucky; there is no moon to obscure the stars tonight, and the longer we stay here, the more stars will reveal themselves to us. It only takes a short time for eyes to get used to seeing in this.”

Faint starlight falling onto Noctis, the line of his throat and his shoulder, the dark strands of his hair: and there’s no way Prompto can use anything like a camera, not here, not now. 

Not that he would want to, anyway: and he can easily fix this sight in his memories. Fix the smile touching Noctis’s mouth and the way his hair brushes the collar of his shirt. Fix the darker scar-lines running over the skin of his throat and their contrast against the slackened angle of his jaw. Fix the soft silver light that seems to radiate out from him.

The wind picks up and Noctis doesn’t seem to heed it: he is still looking up, rapt.

Prompto shivers, and he hurriedly pulls up the hood of his coat, and stuffs his hands in his pockets.

And he looks up, too.

Clouds scudding, and they only look like they’re moving slowly, when the wind riffles so roughly through Noctis’s hair.

Prompto thinks of resolution, as he gets used to the night and to the awkward angle of his neck, and he can see more and more stars now -- and, leaping out at him from the sky, a straight line of four stars -- it’s not exactly a constellation, but it’s the first grouping of stars he’s ever learned to recognize, and he hasn’t seen it in a long time.

He can’t help but laugh -- softly, but he’s laughing all the same.

Scrape of a shoe, coming closer. “That is a good sound to hear -- you, laughing,” he hears Noctis say. “Will you tell me why you are laughing?”

He points out the line of four stars, and as he watches he thinks one of them flickers in color, shifting from whitish light to something more like pale blue. “When I was growing up those four stars were always easy to see in the sky, and you saw them almost all year-round. I used to think there was something magic about them, because of the straight line and all. Then I read about constellations, and I wasn’t surprised to learn that they were like, they were a sword, held in a warrior’s hand.”

He tries to point out the rest of the stars forming the shape of the warrior. “There’s his head and there’s his heart. The stars for his feet -- aren’t so easy to see, this time of the year.”

“A warrior, is it?”

“Yeah.” And he looks away from those stars.

He looks at Noctis: at the frown of him, the shadows descending onto him like a ghastly crown, the gathering lines between his eyebrows. 

And he reaches out to his cheek and asks, gently, “What’s wrong?”

Noctis looks away, and lets out a bitter small sound. 

He turns to follow him. To take his hands. “I said something wrong. Tell me,” he says, gently. “Please?”

“It is -- nothing,” Noctis eventually says. “Less than nothing. I -- I did not expect to be reminded of the years, not this way.”

“What?” 

He looks around wildly, and finds the chairs, and it’s his turn to lead Noctis, to guide him in that direction. “Sit, come on, if we’re going to talk let’s be comfortable,” he says, he coaxes.

“It is nothing,” Noctis says again. “I promise. It’s of no import.”

“You’re upset, so it’s not -- it’s not _nothing_. It can’t be that.”

He draws Noctis in close.

And his reward is, again, Noctis’s sigh, against his shoulder. “Tell me again about that, that grouping of stars.”

“The -- what? The sword?” He looks at it again. “Whoever that warrior was, he was placed in the sky after his death so that he could continue to lead armies. His sword would be, like, his battle flag? Something like that. Something that was easy to find, and to follow. That was the story I heard.”

“It is very different from the story I heard, in my time.” Tight pinched line of Noctis’s mouth. “My time -- really was long ago, to you. Long enough that it is not even a story, not even a myth, that you might have heard about.”

“Noctis,” he says, and he pulls him close. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Understand that. It’s not your fault. Only -- time is what it is.” He feels Noctis’s arm wind around his waist, in turn. “I was born a long time ago, and when they told me the story of those stars, they said those four stars were, were the road to heaven.”

With his free arm, Noctis gestures: it’s not quite the same angle, but Prompto can see how he’s tracing the straight line of four stars, but Noctis is extending the line, up and up until he’s pointing straight overhead -- at nothing. 

He’s just a little off from one of the brightest stars in the sky, the polestar for this part of the world.

“And that -- there was a door there. A door that was the heart of a star. The star was the door, and the keeper of the door. The star was -- justice, and mercy, and order. A personification of these things. If I wanted to be a good ruler, if I wanted to be a wise leader, I had to fix that star in my mind at all times. Always, ruling over my head.” Raw edge on the too-soft laugh. “I see that star has moved, too. It is not in the place where I had always thought it would be. That feels -- I do not know how to feel about that.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, either.

All he can do is take Noctis’s hand, and brush a kiss over his knuckles.


	3. Chapter 3

3.  
“ -- right, I think that’s it, was there anything else we needed to talk about?”

Two women around the table with him, and a mess of coffee mugs and crumb-strewn plates and cutlery before them, squeezed into the spaces between his tablet and their textbooks and all their marked-up index cards. 

“You’re in a hurry to leave,” Prompto says, crunching the last mouthful of ice in his cup of cold coffee, and grinning as the flush creeps up into Luna’s hairline. 

“Hot date?” But it’s not a question, the way Aranea asks, with the smirk widening and widening on her mouth.

“I told you I had a date, you know who I’m seeing, can I ditch you two now?” Luna says, and she only sounds like she’s groaning and annoyed because she’s pressing quick kisses to Aranea’s temple, to the top of his head, and she’s picking up her designer satchel and the knapsack full of her books before she’s sweeping out the door of the coffee shop.

“Cindy’s good for her, isn’t she?” Aranea says as she shakes out her wrists and packs her laptop away. 

“The best. I like seeing Luna happy. She deserves to be happy,” Prompto says as he sorts through the mess of pens and markers still left on the table. “This one mine or yours?”

“Yours. Okay, if we’re done here, I’m off. The kids are gonna get upset if I’m not home to tuck them in and read them their bedtime stories. Which reminds me,” and she picks up the extra package on the table: a slice of cake that Prompto has pressed on her, that he’s bought for her. “When are you going to come by to see them? They’ve been asking for you, you know. Brats,” she says, grinning. “You’d think they’d rather ask for their mama, or something.”

“Maybe they like me better than you.” He grins, and shows her all his teeth.

She swats at the top of his head, and laughs dark and low. “Never.”

So he relents. “I’ll try to come by some time when you’re picking them up from school. We’re a little busy at the camera place too, right now.”

“Yeah, you guys are making a killing. Good job, yeah?” And she’s out the door, cake-laden, whistling.

He drops a handful of change into the tip jar when he goes, and the girl behind the counter beams at him and signs _Thank you!_

The difference between him and the others is that he doesn’t really have anything to do, once all the daytime tasks are done: he’s been dropped into the daytime rotation at the camera shop because of all the crowds coming in to inquire after the new stocks. He’s never attended night classes and he’s not going to start now.

But he feels wide-awake and a little hungry, despite the sweet snacks that had kept him going through three hours of study group with Luna and Aranea, and he stops beneath an awning for a derelict furniture store, and peers at one of the lists he keeps on his phone.

“Nope, nope, nope,” he mutters, shaking his head at one entry after another. He’s not in the mood for things like -- burgers or pizza or anything of the sort.

The wind picks up and he huddles into the collar of his sweater, and he thinks, longingly, of soup.

The newest item on the list catches his eye, then, and he doesn’t remember when he added it -- but when he clocks the address he nods, once, and shifts his heavy bag on his shoulders, and walks past the coffee shop again. Heading in the other direction, this time.

Buzz of his phone, ringing, as he waits at a street corner for the lights to turn green: the sound is surprisingly loud when he’s hemmed in on all sides, when everyone around him is wearing impatience like creased and faded masks. 

He nearly stops in the middle of the road when he reads the name on the display. “Noctis?” he asks, when he answers the call.

“Yes. I can see you as well as speak to you.”

He makes it to the other side of the road somehow, and ducks into the nearest clear alleyway. “Where are you exactly?”

“Please stay where you are,” is what he hears. “I will be with you shortly.”

“Hi,” Prompto says, when Noctis appears, trailed by streamers of blue light. 

“Hello.”

“Working tonight?”

“I was, after a fashion. And you?”

“School,” Prompto says, and he takes Noctis’s offered hand. “Study group. But obviously I’m done with that. I’m, actually I’m on my way to dinner. There’s this place I want to try, because I’m in the mood for,” and he interrupts himself, laughing. “You know, my friends hate it when I pick where we’re eating.”

Flash of a frown, on Noctis’s face. “Why?”

“I like spicy food. Like, spicy spicy. Like, burn your tongue off spicy. I like it. They don’t.”

His reward is Noctis’s surprised laugh. “Fortunately that is not something I should be concerned with now. So you need not worry about me, if you wish to eat that tonight.”

“Oh. You want to come with?” He tugs Noctis closer, and it’s nice to keep walking, shoulder brushing against shoulder.

“If it would not inconvenience you.”

“Heck no. Come on,” and he laughs, and he can almost forget the cold of the night that presses in on him, with that gentle shadowy presence next to him.

Though Noctis does start looking concerned when he leads him into a maze of narrow lanes and the towering shadows of old-brick walls. “Where are we going?”

“Not much farther now,” he says, and then he turns one last corner and takes a deep breath. “Oh, that smells good.”

“Quite pungent,” Noctis says, smiling a little.

“My kind of cooking,” and Prompto tugs him toward the clusters of tables and chairs all set out on the pavement itself. Harsh floodlight-brightness and the whir and churn of fans, smoke- and steam-clouds, and the rising and falling voices of the customers and of the staff.

His eyes are drawn right to the jam-packed display of ingredients: metal bins laid out to the night, heaps of vivid color. Fresh greens, several types of mushrooms, tomatoes and onions in quarters, sliced root vegetables, and over all of them on a precarious shelf, dried noodles to one side and fresh ones to the other. Meat and fish cakes and sliced sausages and bean curd and skewered dainties. 

“What is this?” Noctis asks, and he looks bewildered, and Prompto can’t blame him.

So he points out the process for his benefit. “They give you a container of some kind, and a set of tongs. You move down the line and you pick out what you want to eat. If you like the green stuff you have to get twice as much as what you think you’ll eat. Noodles go on top of everything, if you like noodles. Most people do. The people behind the counter, they weigh your food and tell you how much you owe them. And then they grab your container and, and then, you see those big pots?”

“Yes.”

“Soup,” Prompto says. “They cook your ingredients in soup, and then they tell you where the sauces and condiments are so you can put in as much or as little of each as you like. Then you eat. Pretty simple, don’t you think?”

“Yes. I think I understand why you wanted to dine here. Thank you for taking the time to explain,” and he pulls away, then, a little, and Prompto doesn’t want to let go of his hand, but he does. “Shall I find you a table?”

Blink. Blink. “You’d do that?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, you’re wonderful, thanks,” and Prompto can’t stop smiling -- not even when Noctis takes his bag and walks away.

He looks odd, Prompto thinks, in that elegant suit and that garish bag -- but his stomach chooses that moment to grumble at him, and he starts, and heads for the end of the briskly-moving line of diners.

Hot scent of spicy soup sticking to his skin as he picks through the bins, and he feels grateful for the sharp bite of it.

“Sliced beef?” the woman at the till asks as he’s hunting through his pockets for change. 

“Yeah, sounds good,” he says, and while he’s extracting his wallet from his pocket, a thought strikes him. “Oh. What do you have to drink?”

She hands him a laminated sheet of paper: sodas and coffee and cold drinks that sound more like desserts on one side, and a short list of tea selections on the other.

“Be right back,” he says.

Noctis is smiling, a little, when he comes to sit by him. “Your food?”

“Being cooked. They gave me a number, I have to wait for it to be called. In the meantime, here,” and Prompto hands the drinks list over. “Tell me if you see anything interesting.”

“Hmm,” he hears Noctis say. 

Noctis poring over the list is as good as dinner theater, Prompto thinks, hiding his grin in his sleeve as he watches Noctis run his finger over the names, and mutter thoughtfully to himself.

He has to get up and collect his bowl full of steam and soup and cooked food; on the way back to the table, he throws condiments and several spoonfuls of lurid red sauce willy-nilly into a bent-handled tin cup.

But he almost forgets everything when he sits down again, and looks at Noctis: Noctis, who’s covering his mouth with his hand, eyes still riveted to the list of teas.

Carefully, Prompto sets his bowl and cup aside, and reaches out to him. “Okay?”

Noctis doesn’t respond, at least not in words. He turns the sheet back around so Prompto can read it, and points to the last item.

“Golden Needle of Mountain Lakes. Pretty name. What is it though?” Prompto blinks. “I’ve never heard of that before. I mean, I don’t know much about tea, I just hang out with people who like some specific types.”

“You are familiar with some of the rituals of tea, however?” There’s a shaky quality to Noctis’s voice, and it makes Prompto get up and sit on the same side of the table, the better to let him lean in close. 

“Yeah, my friend Luna studied with a tea master at some point, and she practiced on us some.”

“I did the same thing. My tea mistress told me that it didn’t matter whether I found solace in the movements or in the tea, so long as I did find it. Solace, that is. But that, that was her preferred type of tea. I always associated the scent of it with going to her lessons. I -- I’ve looked for it, for that tea, from time to time, and I’ve never been successful.”

He looks almost shocked, Prompto thinks.

So he doesn’t hesitate: he squeezes Noctis’s hand and takes the drinks list back to the till, and says, “Tea, please? I’ll take a pot of the Golden Needle of Mountain Lakes.”

The woman blinks at him, and nods. “I’ll bring it right over.”

“Thanks,” and he pays for that, too, and hurries back to Noctis.

Who says, “What have you done?”

Prompto only smiles, and starts in on his meal: and now the soup has cooled to the right temperature, steam-wreathed, and yet he’s in no danger of burning his tongue, and everything’s been perfectly cooked. Greens and bean curd and sausage and noodles and the sliced beef, and he happily mixes in his condiments, and after a few bites he’s already fighting the urge to sneeze.

Which gets him a startled laugh from Noctis. “I feel that I have to say, you have brought this down upon yourself.”

“I know, that’s why it’s so much fun,” he says, slurping his soup, and brushing sweat-sodden strands of hair out of his eyes.

“You ordered tea?”

Prompto sits up straight, and nods thanks at the man who’s coming up to their table.

“Prompto,” he hears Noctis say.

“Shush. Let me do this,” he says.

Plain white teapot: he’s familiar with its squat shape, and its lopsided weight. Even the pattern of cracks in the lid feels familiar, like he’s seen it before. Cups to match, white and small and deep, and he pushes one of those cups toward Noctis.

Who covers his mouth with his hand, again, for a moment -- and then he takes Prompto’s hand in both of his own. “Thank you, truly.”

He can’t find any words to answer that shy soft grateful smile: so he reclaims his hands, and pours, just until Noctis’s cup is half-full.

Noctis takes his hand again: squeezes, then lets him go; and Prompto can’t regret the loss of contact.

He forgets to eat, watching as Noctis picks up the cup in unsteady fingertips, and takes a long reverent breath of the fragrant tea-steam, like oranges and good dark earth and delicate green growth; and there are tears gathering in the corners of his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

4.  
The line of people outside the bookshop is -- not that long. Not as long as he’d feared it would be. Really, he can handle this. There are less than twenty people in the line. And they, they might all be his kind of people. No one is talking, except if the people in the line happen to be friends or something else, standing in line together. And those who aren’t talking are glued to the screens of their phones or their tablets. There aren’t even any ushers or security staff, none that he can see anyway: so he squares his shoulders and takes a spot at the end of the line.

His phone rings, then, and the message on the screen says _Video call: Accept/Reject?_

“I got your message,” Luna says, as soon as he swipes to accept the call. “You’re in line?”

“Just got in, yeah, I’m the end of the line right now,” he says. 

Sunlight filters in from the very ceiling of the mall and its wide wide skylights, and he sort of wishes he were out in that light, sort of wishes he could be looking at things like -- people flooding by, or the occasional dog or cat wandering past on the sidewalks. Groups of kids in school uniforms. He likes to observe people, likes to look at their faces. 

Where he is right now, he’s likely to get stared at. A line out of the entrance to a bookstore: who does that?

And it’s not even the kind of book that he likes to read, and he tells Luna so. “I mean. No judgment, right? But why am I doing this and not you?”

“Because you’re my friend?” He watches her wince, extravagant and so out of place when she’s wearing a very formal jacket and a lot of lace in her blouse, in her cuffs. “Because my mom? And her duties? Which I have to help her with? You know she was literally rushing out the door this morning, and she turned back just so she could ask me what I was going to do to make it up to you.”

“What the hell for?” he asks, raising both eyebrows at her.

“So she could contribute. I have no idea what she means by that.”

“Tell her thanks but -- she really doesn’t have to?”

“You know she’ll insist.”

He knows that. He knows.

A cold cold breeze whistles past his feet, and he looks up, and smiles. 

Two old men in suits drift by, and they’re only different in the patterns, in the details. The one with the shock of silver-gray hair has a long coat on; he bows to Prompto and smiles, politely, and then tugs his clean-shaven companion -- who isn’t wearing a tie -- deeper into the store.

He doesn’t lose sight of them until they turn the corner, into what Prompto knows is the nonfiction section of the bookshop.

And he can’t understand the language the two of them are murmuring in, but that doesn’t matter: they’re ghosts, and he has the odd feeling he’s seen the two of them before. They look kind to him, anyway. Kind and a little bit worn-down, and the clean-shaven one looks like he’s watching everyone and everything closely: but he holds on to his companion’s hand with an attachment that even Prompto can see clearly.

“Prompto?”

He blinks.

“Luna,” he says. And sighs. “I don’t think I can talk you out of, of whatever it is you’ve got in your head, on the topic of paying me back for this. But, well, you know I’m not really sore at you. You know that, right?”

“You should be, you know, why are you letting me spoil your free afternoon? But yeah, okay, message received, I’ll drop the subject. I have to go in a few minutes anyway. Just -- go do something nice for yourself once you’ve gotten through the line?”

“I intend to,” he says, and she gives him a fond smile, and waves goodbye, and hangs up.

The line’s been moving while he’s been on the call, and he’s actually already inside the store, and as soon as he gets within arm’s reach of the magazine racks he pulls out a recent issue of a digital photography title, as well as one of the comics that Aranea’s gotten him hooked on. 

He’s reading about the latest adventures of three girls exploring their world and looking for clues to some kind of magical mystery when he sees the display for the book that Luna’s sent him here to pick up. He’s got her preorder forms and everything else, and all he has to do is pay for the copy and go -- but now he can see the reason for the line, and the reason for her excitement.

“Huh. Goody bags,” he says, to no one in particular.

He doesn’t even peek into the one that he gets; he just tosses the book into the goody bag, and he’s heading to the registers to pay for his comic book and his magazine when he sees a familiar silhouette next to a display of -- fountain pens?

He gets his things bagged and paid for and then he’s veering back into the store, and the kind old ghosts brush past him on their way out, and he reaches out and taps a shoulder clad in gray-pinstriped black. “Noctis?”

What a smile: soft and small and bright in a way that Prompto still isn’t used to, a smile that tells him he’s welcome, he’s always welcome.

“Hello, Prompto. And -- it is a good thing, that you’re here. I would like to take up a little of your time.”

“Buying something?”

“Yes. And I cannot decide. So if I might impose on you?”

He grins. “Sure. But don’t get buyer’s remorse if you buy the thing I pick and then you decide that you hate it.”

That gets him a playful smile back. “I will do my best. Now.” Tap of his fingertips against one dark bottle with a black-and-gold label, and then another. “This one is smoke gray and this one is dark purple. I cannot decide which one I like better.”

“Well, what do they look like when you write with them? Got samples?” he asks the man standing on the other side of the counter.

He blinks, a little, when it’s Noctis who moves: and he’s picking up a pretty thing in glass. Is it a pen, this frosted pale gray thing? One end is blunt, and the other is shaped like a sharp-pointed bulb, carved with a cluster of tight narrow spiral grooves.

Noctis wipes that sharp grooved point on the piece of soft rag set on the counter, then dips it into the small vial taped to the box of gray ink before writing, on the provided roll of scrap paper, _Stay with me._

“Oh, nice,” Prompto says, understanding. The glass pen is a lot like a brush, and a lot like a stylus. The ink gathers in the narrow grooves so it can be transferred to the paper, so it can form the lines of the words. “The pen’s pretty, too.”

Again Noctis goes through the motions of cleaning the pen. This time, before he writes the same phrase, he dips it into the dark purple ink. “Which one would you choose?”

“That one,” he says, after a moment’s thought. “The purple.” A thought strikes him, then. “I wish you could sort of mix those two inks together, though. Like, a little of the gray into a lot of the purple. A few drops? That might look nice?”

Noctis smiles, a little. “That is a fine suggestion. I will have to try it some other time. For now, I will go with your choice. Thank you.”

For some reason, that makes Prompto smile and cover up his mouth.

Out in the wide corridors again: the sunlight falling into the mall has grown brighter. 

“And yourself,” Noctis asks, “you came to the bookstore for a purchase of your own?”

“Yeah, I bought something, but it’s not for me,” and Prompto shrugs, and shows him the goody bag. “Luna asked me for a favor. I didn’t really have anything to do so I found myself saying yes.”

“Ah. You are a good friend, then,” he hears Noctis say. 

“I try. Not always sure I do a good job of it.” 

Noctis hums, quietly. “And now? What are your plans?”

“I was thinking of going outside. Take a few pictures. See that sunlight? It’ll only get better as we get closer to evening. To sunset. You know about the golden hour?”

That gets him a smile. “I am sure it means something different to you; in my time, we spoke of the golden hour when we spoke of things like, hmm, a good conversation. When you speak with someone and when you are finished, you know yourself and the other person better.”

“That’s so poetic, why am I not surprised,” Prompto says, chuckling. “It’s a term in photography, too. The time of day when the sun’s just rising, and when it’s just about to set: golden hours. Because of the quality of the light, you see.”

“That is also poetic.”

And he’s about to -- take Noctis’s hand, or maybe do something more foolish like kiss him quickly on the cheek, when Noctis stops and turns and he follows the line, tries to find what he’s looking at -- 

“What,” he says.

“That was -- almost accurate,” Noctis says.

He whirls on him. “It was?”

Noctis taps his own shoulder. “The pauldrons were shaped much like the ones I used to wear.” Next he gestures to his throat. “And they were of a piece with the collar. Tall and made of armor, and that is about right, too. That height was necessary -- no, vital; a warrior would need protection against arrows and swords alike. The robes were perhaps just a little too long, and mine were never stitched closed in that fashion. But I would like to know why people are wearing those, those pieces today.”

“Let’s find out.”

They follow the person in the costume up a set of escalators, and then another -- and on the fourth floor of the mall, that person vanishes into a small crowd of people dressed in other versions of that armor and those robes. 

Now Prompto can see various replica weapons: bows and axes and spears and swords, and he sneaks a look over at Noctis.

He looks bemused, and maybe he’s smiling, a little. Maybe this is familiar to him.

So Prompto leans closer and says, “Tell me about it.”

Blink. Blink. “You are serious.”

He grins. “Wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t.”

“I. Ah.” Noctis’s smile is a little soft around the edges. “Well, if you’re certain. Properly, all of this, these pieces of armor, these replica weapons -- all of these are from a little after my time, after my soldiers and I had been through our share of conflicts.”

“ _Your_ soldiers, huh. How many are you talking about there?”

“Never more than a few hundred, truly -- we trained to be elite skirmishers. Rapid maneuvers.” Grin. “Like ghosts.”

“Seriously?” Prompto says.

That’s when the sign catches his eye: and he points it out to Noctis. “Well, that clears some of it up, I guess. Why are there people in historical armor in a mall? Because the mall is hosting an event related to a historical drama. They’re even going to do a show. Makes sense!” 

“I do not know if I would wish to watch that,” Noctis says, hands clasped behind his back, and the small paper bag with his bottle of ink dangling. 

“It’s not my thing either,” he says. “Nyx might like it though. He’s a sucker for TV dramas.”

Noctis laughs, a little.

They’re on the way back down when he catches sight of it -- and it hits him with an unexpected immense impact, like being hurled down to his knees, like being caught in the blast radius of a lightning storm, and his ears are ringing and he has to close his eyes, he has to close his eyes, if he looks at Noctis now he’ll see it, he’ll see it -- the real thing, right there, mounted in a glass case next to its scabbard -- and the ghost thing.

“Prompto.”

And he can hear Noctis’s voice, gentle and sweet and patient, but from very very far away. 

“Sit, please.”

Bench beneath him. 

Where had the bench come from?

He feels sick. He feels like he’s about to throw up. Shaking hands, unsteady hands: he pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and covers his mouth, his eyes, his tears.

“Prompto. Breathe.”

He takes a shivering breath, and looks at Noctis.

Who is kneeling before him, the fine lines of his suit in disarray, his ink-bottle purchase set safely onto the glossy tiles.

And, in his chest: the sword that only Prompto can see. Silver-colored pommel, that looks heavy enough to break bones. Wide black cords wrapped in a simple pattern around the grip, long enough for two-handed use, and sporting an elegant curve of silver for a knuckle-bow. The cross-guard is the most decorated part of the weapon: silver-banded crystal-blue orb protected by a single silver wing, on the opposite side from the guard. Shield-shapes and a smaller wing, leading on to the rest of it.

The rest, meaning: the broad blade of the sword that pierces Noctis. Some kind of lace-like decoration in an extended teardrop-shape on the face of the blade itself, surrounded by grooves running along the cutting edges. Faint lines of light radiating from the blade and its dark metal, its elaborate folded curved lines of sheen, that remain in Prompto’s vision even after he blocks out the sight of the sword.

“Look at me,” Noctis is saying. “Look at me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” and Prompto is grateful, and he looks up. 

He focuses on Noctis’s eyes: blue, deeper than ocean waters and night skies. The lines in his face and the strands of his hair. The movements of his mouth: what, what is he saying?

It is truly strange to no longer inhabit the earth,  
to no longer practice customs barely acquired,  
not to give a meaning of human futurity  
to roses, and other expressly promising things:  
no longer to be what one was in endlessly anxious hands,  
and to set aside even one’s own  
proper name like a broken plaything.  
Strange: not to go on wishing one’s wishes. Strange  
to see all that was once in place, floating  
so loosely in space. And it’s hard being dead,  
and full of retrieval, before one gradually feels  
a little eternity. Though the living  
all make the error of drawing too sharp a distinction.  
Angels (they say) would often not know whether  
they moved among living or dead. The eternal current  
sweeps all the ages, within it, through both the spheres,  
forever, and resounds above them in both.

“Rilke. Where’d you learn,” Prompto begins.

“I have had time to read, and I find that poet’s work to be particularly moving,” is Noctis’s reply. And: “Shall I go on?”

“Just,” and he shakes his head. “I -- I just wanted to understand what you were saying -- could you say it again, please?”

Noctis smiles, and that smile is bright even in the watered-down sunlight falling all around.

Holds his hands, and whispers the verses to him, until he can’t see the sword any more.


	5. Chapter 5

5.  
“You don’t look okay.”

“I don’t feel okay,” he whispers, and he’s keenly aware of the presence of the little girl and the silver-lit silence of her footsteps. The cold of her hand against his shoulder. 

“Then why are you here? Why aren’t you home resting?”

He shakes his head, and tries to smile at her, and knows the line of his mouth is too pinched and too unhappy, because she makes the exact same strained face back at him. “I was restless. I was not happy. I don’t like being home alone.”

Now she looks sympathetic. “I don’t like being alone either. But, but you didn’t have to work.”

“I don’t mind. It’s not hard.” In fact he’s sitting in the back room of the camera shop, left with the day’s files and the bookkeeping, since the daytime manager had taken one look at him and shaken his head and told him to sit down for the rest of the day.

“Someone’s coming,” the little girl says, and she shivers out of sight.

Prompto looks up. “Sir.”

The daytime manager still looks unhappy. “Still here?”

“Still alive,” he tells him.

“Better still be. You can go. I’m sending you home now. And before you ask or object or anything, you’re still getting paid proper, even if you’re not working the full eight hours. We can do that for you at least, now go and get some rest.”

“Thank you,” Prompto says, and he still pushes up carefully from the desk when he stands. Slow and steady, he thinks, slow and steady, as he makes his way back to the staff room, as he whispers a goodbye to the little girl.

Out the back door of the shop that opens on to a quiet side street: at least he doesn’t have to face the pity and the stares of the customers. At least he doesn’t have to see anyone for quite a while. At least the street runs most of the way back home -- it’s just that he hasn’t been walking this way for some time now, always working the late shifts and always walking out the front door to make sure everything’s locked up and secure.

Mutter of thunder in the lowering gray skies overhead, and he grits his teeth and huddles further into his extra layers.

This route takes him past the coffee shop where he usually meets Aranea and Luna -- but the voice that calls out to him from the open door doesn’t belong to either of them.

“Hey, ain’t you Prompto?”

He blinks. Turns around, slowly, and the shape that walks toward him is still dressed in bright yellows and oranges. Eyebrows pulled together into a straight line, and concern in her eyes.

“You don’t look well at all,” he hears her say. “You didn’t go to work sick, now, did you?”

“I went to work. But I’m not, not that sick,” he says. “Hi Cindy.”

“Hi yourself. Bet you’re running a fever.”

“I don’t know,” he says, weakly.

“Come on,” she says, and since she’s got his arm and won’t let go -- she has a very gentle grip and very rough hands -- he follows her into the coffee shop, and he follows her right onto one of the couches, so he’s squashed between her and a heap of oversized textbooks.

In a listless haze, he watches as she pushes a wireless headset into position at her ear, and taps on her tablet’s screen, and then: “Luna. Hi. Guess what.”

“Yeah, I found him, he’s right here in the coffee shop with me.” 

“You want me to pass the call to him or what? Oh, you’ll call him. Fine by me.”

“Don’t you worry about that. I’ll sit on him if he doesn’t mind himself. Objections? No? I’ll see you at dinner, now.”

So Prompto coughs into his sleeve, and says, “Please don’t sit on me.”

“You tell her that,” Cindy says with a quiet laugh.

And Luna calls him, and says, impossibly gentle for all the rising heat in her words, “Is this the part where I call you names? Because I can clearly remember you and Aranea scolding me. In stereo. I was sick and I had to go and appear somewhere with my mom. Didn’t really have a choice there. And now you’re doing the thing I was doing. Hypocrite much?”

“Didn’t have a choice either. I had to go and work,” he mutters. “Didn’t want to lose my job.”

“But if you’re at the coffee shop in the middle of the afternoon -- ”

“They allowed me to go home. The manager told me to get some rest.”

Long sigh. “That was kind of them. Can you please let Cindy take you home now? For me?”

“Yeah, sure,” he starts, and then he trails off, at the sound of Cindy’s long low whistle.

“Ohh he’s a handsome one. And -- well what do you know. He’s coming here.”

“Noctis?” Prompto asks, once he recognizes that shape of suit and spiked hair and worry.

“What’s going on?” Luna asks, from the phone in his hand.

“May I?” Noctis asks.

“What?” Prompto asks.

And he’s watching Noctis as he takes Prompto’s phone and speaks into it. “Hello. This is Noctis.”

“Hello, Luna. It is a pleasure to speak with you. He does not look well, now that you mention it.”

Chuckles. “No, no, nothing of the sort. I just happened to be nearby, and he had mentioned that he was fond of this place. I will. Thank you.” And: “Here,” he says, and Prompto reaches out for his phone. “I’m to take you home, it seems.”

“Oh. All right then, that was going to be me,” Cindy pipes up. “Name’s Cindy. I’m with Luna -- that girl you were just talking to.”

“She did mention you,” and Noctis is shaking Cindy’s hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise, Noctis. Now go care for this boy,” she says, and Prompto would make faces at her if he’d had the strength. “Goodness knows he needs a lot of it.”

“I will do my best.”

Prompto sighs, when Noctis half-kneels next to him. “I told you, I’m okay. Just fighting off the last bits of -- whatever it was that got me.”

“I do worry,” is the very quiet reply. “Since I understand that you are in this situation partly because of me.”

“You didn’t do anything,” he says, as vehemently as he can, which is not much given that he falls into another coughing fit afterwards. “Noctis, why would you think that? You didn’t do anything to hurt me.”

“I was still the reason for you falling ill.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” Prompto mutters, then. “Like you didn’t ask for, for yours. Can we leave it at that? Can we just, you know, deal? Maybe we can do that apart but maybe we can also do it together.”

“I agree. We must -- deal. So come on,” Noctis says.

“You go and look after yourselves now,” Cindy says.

“Thanks, Cindy,” Prompto says.

Outside, onto the sidewalk: Noctis takes his hand, and leads him carefully into another small and quiet street. 

“Noctis, what,” he begins.

“I said I would do my best to care for you. So I am going to do that, right now. But first I have to ask for your permission.”

He stares. He has the feeling he needs to close his mouth, or at least pick his jaw up off the street. “Permission? Yes. You have it. Now what did I give you that for? Why did you ask for it?”

“Because if I am to make you feel better, I have to do this.”

And before Prompto can ask: Noctis is holding him by the shoulders, rooting him fast to the sidewalk. Noctis is smiling, small and shy and sweet. Noctis is blurring out to his already tired eyes.

Contact: the brush of Noctis’s mouth against his own. 

Warmth sparks through him, shivers and thrills down his nerves, warmth that turns him inside out in a gentle and loving way. 

And Prompto blinks, blinks, and takes a deep breath.

A clean breath, without any heaviness, without any sharp pain in his chest. 

The fog that’s been hanging over his thoughts melts away, and he can see the world clearly, cleanly, bright and new and surprising: and all of him, the arc of his mind and the beat of his heart, is bending towards Noctis. 

Who is looking at him, and who looks like he might shuffle his feet right there and then.

“Noctis,” he says, and he smiles. He reaches out to him in turn, and brushes a fingertip against that smooth cheek. “What did you do? That -- that didn’t hurt you, did it? Did I hurt you?”

And Noctis’s smile is exactly like the sun breaking from the clouds overhead, just for a moment, just long enough to cast pale light onto their feet. “I -- you still think of me, when you have every right to think of yourself. To look after yourself.”

“Tell me you’re okay, or, or -- or you can give it back. Whatever you did to take the pain away. Give it back to me, if it’s only going to hurt you.” He reaches for Noctis’s hands.

Noctis holds on to him, too. “No. I will not be hurt by that. You were running a fever; you were congested in your chest and in your head. I have taken that away from you. That is all.”

“That -- that’s not it, that’s not something you say _that’s all_ to,” he says, and he tries to think it through. “I -- you can do that? You’ve always been able to do that?”

“I have always been able to do that,” Noctis says, with a slight nod. “It is perhaps the only useful thing that I have gained, in this condition of mine.”

“That’s good, isn’t it,” and he can smile, he can press his forehead to Noctis’s and just take in the presence of him, without feeling like the slightest breeze will knock him down. 

“Not in recent days. It did not seem necessary. You are in the best of health, most of the time. Today, however, today was the exception to the rule. So I needed to hasten to your side. I needed to offer you some, some assistance.”

“Is that how you were able to find me at the coffee shop?”

Nod. “I only had to think of moving, and -- I was carried to your side.”

“I. Noctis.”

Too many shades of meaning in that statement. 

He feels like his knees have deserted him, somehow: he feels like he wants to sit down again.

“Prompto,” he hears Noctis say.

He’s still holding on to both of Noctis’s hands: and the world vanishes again in blue flames, in the thump of moving suddenly from one place to another.

Sun on his shoulders, on the top of his head; and sun caught in Noctis’s hair, on the seams of his suit jacket. 

He looks around and -- and it’s a surprise, and it’s not, because here they are again in this park. Elevated oasis of green, footpaths and plants winding into the center of the city. Greens gone wan and pale, and even the orange flowers that seem to be looking over Noctis’s shoulder are drained of their vibrant colors.

Everything in the world all around looks watered-down, except for the shape of the one who is sitting next to him.

“Noctis,” he says again, once he’s caught his breath. He steels himself. 

Thinks of all the moments he’s spent with Noctis, and hopes he isn’t about to throw that time away. “You. Your thing, about looking after people.”

“Looking after human souls,” Noctis corrects, gently. “The living and the dead alike. Human souls, like yours, like Ignis’s and Gladiolus’s. That is the duty that was placed upon me.”

“Right. And, and if it had been Ignis or Gladiolus in a bad situation: you’d have been compelled to go to them, like, like this. Like you were compelled to find me.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, okay, I get that. Okay.” He does. He understands that much. “And you would be able to heal them, too, if they started feeling sick.”

“Inasmuch as souls like them could fall ill, yes: I would have that duty.”

“How would you help them?”

He watches Noctis’s face: blink, blink, slow and startled. 

And then Noctis smiles. “I would lay my hands on their heads. Like so,” and he demonstrates.

Prompto can’t help but bow his head and close his eyes. The warmth of Noctis, the safety of him, filling him up like gentle bubbles. The weight of those hands on him, soothing.

This time, when he reaches for Noctis, he catches him by his wrists, and looks him full in the eyes. “Your permission: do I have it?”

“Yes,” Noctis whispers, firm gentle word.

And now it’s Prompto’s turn: he tugs, gently, and fights the urge to close his eyes, and kisses Noctis.

Who sighs against his mouth and presses the kiss further, more sweetly.

Crash and blare of trucks roaring down the street below them and they’re jolted apart: but Prompto is smiling into Noctis’s eyes, still. “I hope that didn’t hurt you.”

“It could not hurt me. You, Prompto -- I believe that you would not hurt me. You would not set out to do that.”

“I’d hurt you, if there was something I did to you and neither of us understood what it was,” he says. “Trust me. Been there, done that, got the bloodstained shirt. Not literally. But it feels like it. Bloodstained, I mean.”

“Yes. I see that. We would have to be clear with each other at all times.”

He opens his mouth to answer, but: music rising in ominous trills from somewhere.

He looks around, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Noctis go tense, sees him sit up straight. 

Stirring melodies, building and building and thrilling -- 

“There she is,” Noctis says, and he follows the line of that black-clad arm with his eyes.

The dark-green umbrella spreads wide. In its shade, a woman in a black dress slashed with red, and her hair close-cropped on the sides and spiked on the top, to show off wild-blue streaks. Tights patterned in large-scale lace, and blue boots to match the accents in her hair. Cello planted upright on the walkway between her feet, and bow in her hand, that’s expected: but not the laptop computer on a very low platform next to her left foot, which she’s watching as she plays.

And as she plays on, the sounds of multiple cellos rise into the air around her, and suddenly Prompto understands: “She’s layering the sounds,” he whispers, turning back to Noctis. “What she plays, it goes into her computer, and she manipulates the music as she’s performing it. That’s why she sounds like a whole chorus of instruments when there’s only just the one of her.”

Noctis nods, impressed. 

“It’s good music,” Prompto says.

“It is. And -- and we can listen to it for now. We can talk about everything else later.”

The words sink in, and he tugs on Noctis’s sleeve. Shakes his head. “If we talk later, we might forget things. We might leave them out. I don’t want that.”

“If we talk now, you will miss her performance.”

“So take me to another one. Not this one. Not today. Because today I want to be with you. I need to talk to you. You need to talk to me. Right?”

He watches the hesitation flash across Noctis’s face -- but only for a moment.

When Noctis looks up at him again, he’s quietly ablaze with the real power of him, the real presence of him: and he’s whispering, quietly, urgently. “Open your eyes.”

“My eyes -- no,” Prompto says, shaking his head as soon as he understands what Noctis is trying to say. “No, I can’t -- not that.”

“Please. For me.”

“Why?” He wants to grab Noctis by the shoulders and shake him.

“So we can be clear with each other. So we can understand each other. Open your eyes,” Noctis says, still gentle, but stronger now. “Please, Prompto. For me.”

Prompto squeezes his eyes shut for a long moment, and wills himself not to cry, and takes a deep breath. And another. And another.

And he opens his eyes and reaches out -- and it’s a short distance between them, here where they are leaning into each other -- and under his hand the heavy pommel of Noctis’s sword appears, the black grip, the blade that is beautiful and hateful at the same time: the ghostly blade on which Noctis’s heart is impaled.

Noctis’s hand on his, guiding him forward, and the sword is _cold_ when he finally makes contact with it.

All this time he’s been ignoring that it’s there: he’s been able to hold Noctis, and smile at Noctis, and dream about kissing Noctis. All this time he’s been forgetting it, pretending it doesn’t exist, pretending it’s not been literally driven between them -- and now he’s actually holding it. Not to move it: but its weight in his hand is immense and painful and freezing, and, and if only he could make himself let go -- if only he could find some way of destroying it, without destroying Noctis in the process --

“So now you know the weight of it for yourself,” Noctis says, and how can his voice be so steady, so sweet? How can he look at him with those trusting eyes, like a midnight pierced with millions of stars? “Now you know what I carry in my heart. Can you -- will you speak to me now? Will you tell me that which is true?”

“You didn’t have to ask me to do this,” Prompto says, only barely holding back a sob. “This sword, this damned thing, I want this gone between us, I don’t want the weight of it holding you down, and I would do anything to free you of it. Well. Almost anything. 

“And you didn’t have to, to use the sword to ask me to tell you the truth. I, maybe I know why you need to do this, maybe there’s something you know and I don’t, but -- all you had to do was ask. All you had to do was ask me, any time, any question: and I’d tell you the truth. As best as I could tell you. All you had to do was ask.”

Noctis smiles. “Truly, Prompto?”

He takes his hand off the sword. Clenches that hand into a fist, and tries to make himself forget the weight of it, and when he looks at Noctis again he can’t smile. He’s too emotional to smile -- but he’s not too emotional to speak. “I have to trust you. Telling the truth, the truths I know, the truths I have, that leaves me small and very, very squishy. Open to getting hurt, but with you -- with you I can. With you I have to. Tell the truth, I mean. 

“You are, you’re like Nyx: he’s always been able to tell me the truth and I, I wish I knew why he trusted me that way. You’re like Ignis and Gladiolus: they shouldn’t care about this world, since they’re not part of it any more -- but somehow they care about me and they want me to be all right. You’re like Luna and Aranea and, and Cindy: we don’t feel any need to, to dance around the hard conversations; we just grit our teeth and get through it. We just -- we are, somehow, you and me.

“And you are not like any of them because, because, Noctis, they look at me like they see someone in the world, someone with value. But you look at me like I’m, I’m something you can’t be without. Is that, is that it? Is that how you see me? Why am I the person you can’t be without? And don’t tell me it’s just, just because of that sword. That fucking evil thing between us. You don’t deserve it, you shouldn’t be carrying it!”

“But if it were not for this sword -- I would not have been to walk through the centuries, immortal, and waiting to find you,” Noctis says, gently.

“I can’t believe that, I don’t believe that. You’d have come to me some way. I would have found you somehow. Maybe not in this world, maybe not in this life. Maybe not in these bodies we occupy right now.”

“Perhaps. And -- you asked me questions,” he hears Noctis say. “May I answer? I will do my best to be as clear and as eloquent as you have been. You have spoken from your heart; I must do the same.” Noctis gestures gently at his own chest. “Pierced though that heart might be.”

“Don’t _say_ that,” and Prompto wants to apologize for hissing at him. 

He doesn’t.

He just nods. 

“You will not be angry with me? But perhaps you will understand: I was first drawn to you because, because I wanted the relief that you would have brought me. The relief of release. I was tired, you see: tired of the years, of the burden of time. And to be relieved of it, I thought that I would draw closer to you, just close enough, so that you would see the sword and, and feel compelled to pull it out. I thought that I would be able to convince you to pull out the sword. And -- you came close, didn’t you? The first time you made the sword appear. You almost reached out for it. You almost drew it.”

“Yeah. Not my finest hour,” Prompto mutters, remembering the lightning shattering the murky purple of that dusk-wrapped silence, the electrifying crackle sharp in his veins.

Here is Noctis, shaking his head. “It was not mine, either. So perhaps it was fortunate that at the last moment I changed my mind, and you changed yours.”

“Ran away, more like. I had nightmares for a week.”

“And for that, Prompto, I am truly sorry.

“Afterwards we -- ran into each other again. We were here, in this very place.” And Noctis gestures to the park: they are still on the edges of an oncoming storm, they are still beneath lowering clouds, but there are no painful sharp flashes between them, no threatening roars. 

Only the rain, falling like a whispering curtain, onto them, around them.

Noctis doesn’t move, doesn’t try to seek shelter: so Prompto doesn’t move either. He stays right where he is, pinned and caught on Noctis’s words.

“Here we found each other again. And I saw that you were afraid of me, but you were kind, too. You, you made a very difficult choice. In my life, in my time, I do not know if I would have had a heart strong enough to do the same thing that you did: to be kind, in spite of the wounds we had inflicted on each other. Kindness is -- such a rare thing to come by in this world. And for you to keep it despite the pain that you had gone through -- ”

“Wait, are you talking about -- my story? Someone told you my story. Was it Ignis? Gladiolus?” Prompto covers his mouth, covers his shocked small laugh and the heat that’s rising in his cheeks.

“The latter. He wished to be certain that I understood the situation you had been in.”

Something clicks in Prompto’s mind. “He threatened you, didn’t he.”

Noctis laughs outright. “He said that it would not matter, he would not be able to hurt me, but he would try his very, very best. He would try to hurt me, if I hurt you.”

“I like him a lot but he’s -- a little bit strange,” Prompto mutters.

“On that we’re agreed.”

And here are Noctis’s hands around his, once again. “You are kind, Prompto, and you are kind even to those who have not been kind to you. And that is only part of the reason why I -- feel the way I do, when I think about you. When I see you. When I spend time with you. With you I feel that there is a reason to keep going through the days. But not to be -- eternally unchanging. Not that. Not to be cold and eternally separated from everything else. Not to walk apart from all others. With you I don’t feel afraid of change, as long as I can still be good at the end of it, as long as you can still see me as good at the end of it.”

He turns the words over and over in his head, over and over beneath his heart, and -- “Why are _you_ so kind to me,” he says, he bursts out, quietly.

“I learned to be kind from you.”

“But, Noctis,” and he wants to stop talking, wants to stop thinking, but the words fall out of him anyway. “I, don’t get me wrong: kindness is good. It’s a gift, and maybe I have it, but so do others, right? If that’s the thing that got me my friends, the ones I care for, then it’s good. But for you: where is that kindness going to end? You can see it, can’t you -- you being what you are, and me being what I am. Kindness will only get you pain. Kindness will only get you grief!”

“Don’t you think I feel that?” Noctis says. “Can’t you see that I know that already? The pain and the grief of which you speak. What else is this sword made of? It was my weapon and it was used to betray me: and the kindness I gave to my soldiers drove my enemy to evil, to madness, and he drove my own sword through me, cursing me as I fell. As I rose again, no longer among the living, and never among the dead. This sword is my kindness to him, and it is also the pain and the grief that I have endured because of him.”

Tears streaking down those cheeks, mingling with the rain. “What is this sword, Prompto? There is a gulf between us, and this sword can never be the bridge over that gulf. This sword is the very force that creates that gulf, that causes it to open further and deeper between us. And we can only try, you and I, to reach for each other, over these sharp edges. Over the blade of this sword. Such a small distance, but it might as well be all of time and all of space. Can’t you see that I know this?”

Prompto ignores his own tears in favor of brushing Noctis’s away. “It’s a gulf and, and it’s a gift, it’s the thing that brought us together: but why? Why was this gift given to me? Why did I get the gift that is you? You, you’re so important to me, and I’ll never find the right words to tell you how important you are. But I can’t even think of it -- I don’t _want_ to think of it! Noctis, fuck, why me? Why do I know that, that if I really loved -- ”

He chokes on his sobs, and he can’t take that word back. “If I really loved you, shouldn’t I be strong enough to release you? Shouldn’t I be _kind enough_ to put you out of your misery?”

“You keep calling it that. And perhaps I felt worn and weary, in the long days and nights and years, before now.” How is Noctis able to smile at him, still? Hasn’t he just admitted that he’s weak and small and so, so selfish? 

“Misery, Prompto? I have almost forgotten it. I have almost forgotten,” and oh, he’s beautiful, smiling as he is, radiant like that night full of constellations. “I cannot feel oppressed when it is this same sword that has brought me to you at last. And every moment with you is worth its presence, especially now. Now this sword has allowed me to hear you say that word. I can rest easy, knowing that you might, in some way, return these feelings that I have for you. I have not known love like this, not truly: but that you can show it to me, and that I can return it with these feelings of my own? Then I will bear this sword gladly. I will walk on, knowing what you have said, knowing what I know now.”

“What?” The rain pours cold down the back of Prompto’s neck. “You -- what do you feel for me? And, and you’re so good and so patient with me when you really don’t have to, and I can’t, I can’t help but want that. Want you. Need you. And, Noctis, I need you to be happy! But, but that fucking sword!” He wants to lash out, he wants to run away, and he’s here and rooted next to Noctis. “You and that sword: because of it you were waiting and waiting and, and everything was passing you by: and _I_ will pass you by, _I’ll die_ , unless I take the sword from you and then -- then you can rest, then you’ll be free, but, fuck, what about me?”

He throws back his head and screams, thunder of his impossible heart in his veins, and lightning spiderwebs the sky above him in a painful flash of radiance, and the storm echoes his anguish.

Hands, shoulders, the solid weight of Noctis’s body, pulling him in, sheltering. “It’s all right,” and he can hear those quiet words clearly. “Truly, it’s all right. I will be satisfied with either outcome. I will be pleased and content with having known you, whether you must pass from me, or I must pass from you. And I know that will bring you pain: but will it ease your heart to know this? To know how grateful I will be? Grateful for this chance. Grateful to feel this way. And for the gift, the immense gift, of you. Of knowing you feel as you do. Knowing how you feel about me.”

“Is it that easy for you?”

He pushes himself back upright, and Noctis is so close, and the rain is still pouring onto both of them.

And Noctis’s smile trembles, a little. “Easy? Of course not.”

That makes him grin, weakly. “Okay. Okay. That I believe. I believe you. And, and, is that how it works? I, I, oh, Noctis, what can I say to that? What can I say to you?”

“The truth.” Slow-dawning answer. “Speak clearly, when you speak to me.”

This time, when his mind forces him to see the sword again -- this time, he doesn’t push the sight of it away.

This time, when he sees Noctis, he sees all of him.

And there’s nothing else that he can say, except: “Like this, clear like this: I love you.”

“I love you,” is Noctis’s immediate response. “As clear as that, yes.”

And he pulls Noctis close and kisses him, in the falling rain: and for once he forgets himself, forgets the world, forgets everything else, and he falls headlong into Noctis, and he shivers, grateful and wordless.

**Author's Note:**

> ninemoons42 on Tumblr: [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)


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